Becoming an Actor/Scholar

I'm currently in the process of applying to graduate schools -- I'm looking to get my MFA in Acting. This weekend I'm being the work on all those essays and personal statements that I have to write. One of them wants me to write about a defining life moment that has nothing to do with theatre. Um... I get that they want me to be well-rounded, but I don't think I have any life-defining moments that have nothing to do with theatre. Well, maybe the ones that have to do with religion, but I'm not sure I really want to be that personal. I've had people tell me that they don't know anyone that is as into theatre as I am, and so everything in my life I'm pretty sure I can relate to theatre in some way. My brother's fiancee joked that I could write about the moment I met her, but the night we met we watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch!

Anyway in order to prepare for writing these essays I have been digging up old pieces of writing and I've discovered a blog that I wrote and then never posted. It's sort of the companion piece to the posting after SAA 2010. I was supposed to post this one first, but I guess I never did. Here it is:

Today’s blog will give you a little bit of history: how and why I decided to change my career designation from Actor to Actor/Scholar.

I have always been interested in knowledge. I do inordinate amounts of research when I am in a play; the amount of research is only limited by how much free time I have. When I do a production of a Shakespeare play I always pick up the Arden edition and read all the notes; I also seek out other editions of and essays about that play to read.

Last year the Shakespeare Association of America moved their headquarters to Washington, DC which is also where they were holding their annual conference. I decided to attend the 2009 conference as an observer, since I wouldn’t have to pay for travel and room. I figured three days surrounded by lovers of Shakespeare could not go wrong. And I was right. The event was life-changing, and as such was both exhilarating and depressing. Exhilarating because I felt like I found a part of myself that was missing. Depressing because bridging the two worlds of actor and scholar will be a difficult task.

I attended the sessions and seminars that were somehow related to performance, but even with the scholars participating in those discussions, there was a sense of here are scholars and there are theatre artists and never the twain shall meet. In fact, the performance aspect of Shakespeare has been sadly neglected by most Shakespearean scholarship. I felt hope however, as this appears to be something that is changing. First, with the rising interest in original practices that has occurred in the last decade. Second, with the younger generation of Shakespearean scholars. The wonderful women my age that I met at the conference have a great love of performance, to the point where all of them at some point have staged readings of obscure early modern dramas.

But it is not just in the realm of scholarship where performance has been ignored. In the realm of performance, scholarship has been ignored. One scholar noted in her panel in 2009 that she will go to Q and A's and ask the actors if they read scholarly articles or academic reviews and she always gets the answer no. I spoke to her after to let her know that I do. She said, "Well, you are the first one I've met." And I had to be honest with her, I didn’t know anyone else who did either. And at that conference I only ran into two other full time practitioners, and actually one of them I only knew of as an actor, but in speaking with him it turned out he was actually an English professor who had just recently gotten back onstage. The other was a director, and indeed the scholars who also work in performance tended to be directors as opposed to actors. (This is not to downplay any of these people, their work, or their contributions, merely to point out that the task of being an actor/scholar was overwhelming when faced with the reality that there didn’t seem to be anyone else with my identical perspective or situation.)

So I came home from the 2009 conference with a determination to be a part of the new conversation of performance and scholarship, but not really sure how to go about that. I did know that one step I could take was to attend the 2010 conference as a participant instead of merely an observer. I’ll continue this later, but just to let you know 2010 was even better than 2009 and I left even more hopeful at the progress of the conversation between performance and scholarship.

So that was how the journey began. And it's a journey that is frustrating in regards to grad school. Because there isn't one program that will give me Actor/Scholar. I basically have to chose one for now and hit the other one later. There are two MFA programs that are really appealing to the scholar side of me: the MFA in Staging Shakespeare at the University of Exeter and the Master of Letters/Master of Fine Arts in Shakespeare and Performance at Mary Baldwin. I start think I should apply there (especially given how much I love the ASC), but then I remember that I really do want to get strong actor training in voice, movement, and all that jazz. Sure the two programs have acting components, but something has to go. So I'm trying to look at acting MFAs that seem interested in analysis and Shakespeare, and preferably with an abroad component. It's all very overwhelming.